Vail Daily letter: Tiny fraction not that tiny

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I was disappointed that the Vail Daily published Jacqueline Cartier's "Gay marriage is a thorny church-state issue." Cartier's deep concerns with gay marriage potentially interfering with "religious practices" is both unfounded and unsubstantiated by the laws of all states that do recognize gay marriage.

Also, Cartier is incorrect her quote, "That means that all of this fuss is about less than 0.005 percent of our population, thus 99.99 percent of our population are expected to change their religious beliefs for a relative few who want their partnerships to be classified as 'married.'"

Using her numbers (3.4 percent of the population is gay and 14.1 percent of gays wish to marry, one arrives at 0.48 percent, a factor of 100 larger than what Cartier states (approximately 1.68 million Americans).

I suspect that if the U.S. government was trying to infringe on the religious rights of 1.68 million americans, Cartier would hardly consider those a "relative few."

What is more alarming than Cartier's ignorance is the fact that the Vail Daily published this commentary filled with its unsubstantiated facts and basic arithmetic errors. Does the Vail Daily still employ an editor?

David Nagle

Palo Alto, Calif.

Editor's note: Mr. Nagle is correct that the percentage of Americans directly affected by same-sex marriage is 0.5 percent.